In the life sciences, fluorescence microscopy is a powerful tool which allows the specific and sensitive staining of a specimen in order to detect the distribution of proteins or other molecules of interest. As the background remains unstained, a typical fluorescent image is dark with a number of areas illuminated.
By the introduction of digital pathology, assistance using image analysis tools becomes possible. To achieve a high throughput, low scanning and staining times are needed. This trend is also applicable to fluorescence microscopy, which will be applied more and more in the near future. A lower scanning and staining time will result in a significant lower SNR. Although this is still acceptable for image analysis tools, special enhancement is required to achieve a comfortable contrast for the human operator. This is needed as the human operator is (still) responsible.
US2006149479A1 describes a method for enhancing fluorescence images of an object, such as a biological tissue, by selectively eliminating or reducing unwanted fluorescence from fluorophores other than the fluorophore of interest. The method is based on the measurement of the lifetime of fluorophores while preserving information related to the fluorescence intensity of the fluorophore of interest.
There is a need for improved image enhancement techniques when processing fluorescence images.